gandharvm wrote:
Kindly visit this post and provide explanation. If not the entire question, please address options, C, D, E
The researcher's conclusion is that
if medicine could find ways of preventing all iatrogenic disease, the number of deaths per year would decrease by half.Here's how the researcher's argument breaks down:
- Every year, the number of people who die of iatrogenic disease is approximately equal to the number of people who die of all other causes combined.
- This implies that of all deaths per year, approximately half are due to iatrogenic disease and approximately half are due to all other causes combined.
- Therefore, if medicine could prevent all iatrogenic disease, then the number of deaths per year would decrease by half.
Reading precisely is key to identifying the logical flaw in this argument. The conclusion states that if all iatrogenic disease is prevented,
the number of (ALL) deaths per year will decrease by half. This a pretty rigid and extreme conclusion. It can ONLY be true if the number of deaths due to all other causes does NOT change at all.
To illustrate this: Let's say we expect 50 deaths per year. 25 deaths are due to iatrogenic disease, while 25 deaths are due to all other causes combined.
Then, medicine prevents all iatrogenic disease. Consequently, the 25 deaths due to iatrogenic disease will not take place. At this point, we might agree with the researcher's conclusion, because the number of deaths has decreased by half (from 50 to 25).
But what happens if ANY of those 25 people who avoided death by iatrogenic disease go on to die of ANY other cause (for instance, whatever caused them to receive medical treatment or hospitalization in the first place)? Eliminating one known cause of death for 25 people does not automatically make those 25 people immune to any other cause of death for the rest of the year. If you are hospitalized because you were hit by a car, and do not die as a direct result of your treatment in the hospital, you could still very well die due to the injuries you sustained when you were hit by a car.
And what happens if ANY other cause of death becomes more prevalent in the same year, leading to an increase in the number of deaths due to non-iatrogenic causes? Eliminating one known cause of death for 25 people does not change the probability that any other cause of death will become more prevalent. If you are treated for a stroke and make a full recovery, your survival will have no logical impact on whether or not your neighbor will get hit by a car and die in the same year (unless you have some very sinister plans for your neighbor, which you probably shouldn't mention at the GMAT test center).
Furthermore, the number of deaths due to non-iatrogenic causes could go DOWN for completely unrelated reasons, and this would also invalidate the conclusion, because in that case the total number of deaths would decrease by MORE than half.
The researcher's argument assumes that annual death rates due to all other causes will remain constant, and that people who currently die from iatrogenic disease have NO chance of dying from whatever sent them to medical treatments or hospitalization in the first place. These are huge logical flaws, so let's see which answer choice identifies one of them:
Quote:
(A) prevention of noniatrogenic disease will have an effect on the occurrence of iatrogenic disease
Choice (A) is concerned with whether
prevention of non-iatrogenic disease
affects the occurrence of iatrogenic disease. However, the researcher's argument is concerned with the prevention of
iatrogenic disease and how that prevention
affects the number of all deaths per year. Choice (A) is outside the scope of the argument, and we can eliminate it.
Quote:
(B) some medical treatments can be replaced by less invasive or damaging alternatives
This detail illustrates the argument by naming one way that iatrogenic disease can be prevented. This has no bearing on the logical conclusion — which is about the number of deaths per year — and it certainly doesn't reveal a logical flaw in the argument. Eliminate (B).
Quote:
(C) people who do not die of one cause may soon die of another cause
Excellent! This choice cuts straight to the core logical flaw in the argument. Choice (C) doesn't kill the argument, but it identifies exactly why we should doubt the researcher's logic, and that is what we've been asked to do. Let's keep (C) around and finish analyzing the other choices.
Quote:
(D) there is no one way to prevent all cases of death from iatrogenic disease
So what? The argument doesn't require ONE way to prevent all cases of death from iatrogenic disease. The researcher actually states explicitly that medicine could find
ways (not "a way" or "one way") of preventing all iatrogenic disease. So if anything, the reasoning in the researcher's argument proactively considers this possibility. Eliminate (D).
Quote:
(E) whenever a noniatrogenic disease occurs, there is a risk of iatrogenic disease
Again, so what? The researcher's argument presumes that medicine could find ways of preventing
all iatrogenic disease. The amount of risk that iatrogenic disease occurs has no logical impact on
medicine's ability to find ways of preventing all such disease. Eliminate (E).
Choice (C) is the only answer choice that identifies a clear logical flaw in the argument, while every other choice is irrelevant to the argument that the researcher is making.
I hope this helps!